


Crawl Til Dawn

by notfelix



Category: Community (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Celebrity, Alternate Universe - Vampire, F/F, F/M, M rating is for violence (not sex), Miscommunication, Pining, and if you squint even harder you'll see some Britta/Mary Wollstonecraft, if you squint really hard you'll see some Jeff/Lord Byron, that relationship tag should technically be Britta/Caroline Decker tbh
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-28
Updated: 2017-02-28
Packaged: 2018-09-27 10:59:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 7,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10016801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notfelix/pseuds/notfelix
Summary: "Britta learned a long time ago not to force scorched earth to grow moss."A stranger walks into the bar one night, and how could Britta know they'd have so much in common?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> title is from "Damn These Vampires" by the Mountain Goats, bc subtlety? idk her
> 
> I started this for Community Rarepairs Week back in October and here we are at the end of February and it's still not finished. unbeta'd, so any mistakes are mine to bear alone

Britta Perry knows it isn’t murder if it’s a biological necessity, especially when nine times out of ten (more than that, actually) they leave more disoriented than dead. Really, she’s no worse than those grasshoppers who rip their mates’ heads off after sex. Britta can say with complete honesty that she’s never ripped anyone’s head off. So really, she’s doing better than, like, ten species of grasshoppers.

As if to illustrate the point, last night’s dinner steps out of the bathroom with a towel around his waist and his lips curled into a delirious smile. She used to like this part, charming them; she liked the attention and proving she had some measure of self-restraint, but that was four hundred years ago, almost, and now she just feels guilty, and she can only just glance up from her book for an instant to acknowledge his presence before tired metaphors recapture her attention. Boytoy asks if she’s still reading, has she been up all night? and could he open one of the heavy opaque curtains blocking out the light? And she says no, obviously, because she doesn’t have a death wish, and he relents because the venom has made her glitter in his vision, and soon enough he dresses himself and goes on his merry way, two small little punctures on the side of his neck beginning to scab over, and Britta doesn’t even wait for her mattress to lose the indentation of his body before she falls into blissful sleep.

She rouses at dusk, refreshed and just a little hungry. She draws back her heavy curtains to watch the sun slink out of view, and then it’s off to the bathroom, because a girl’s gotta floss. She brushes her teeth, runs her tongue along her canines, their exaggerated points. She’s proud of them, or, she would be, if she weren’t blind in this regard. As it stands, she’s never—  _never_ — had any complaints, so she must be doing something right.

Britta squeezes into a pair of black vinyl pants (which, she’s been told, make her ass look _incredible_ ) and a white tank top, and if there’s anything she hates more in this world than a certain person she won’t even give the satisfaction of naming, it’s makeup; she’s had centuries to master lipstick, sure, hasn’t gotten a smudge of black on her central incisors in decades, but she will never, ever, ever understand eyeliner, or how anybody can get it to flick out at the corners. She tries anyway, approximates a straight line and hopes it’s enough. If it’s truly atrocious she’s sure one of the waitresses (it’s Vicki, usually) will fix it for her in the bathroom.

After a few minutes spent ever-so-slightly curling her hair (something impossible to fuck up, thank god), Britta pulls on some boots and her favorite well-worn pleather jacket (Britta Perry hasn’t worn real leather since 1912, thank you very much), grabs her purse, and phone, and keys, and wallet, and exits her luxe but cramped apartment to walk the four blocks to The Red Door to start her shift.

Britta tends bar because it’s easy money, really, and she’s good at it, and by last call there is always, always somebody she can bring home for a snack (she’s got leftovers in the fridge, sure, but where’s the fun in that?). It’s a pretty sweet deal, plus it guarantees she’ll actually get out of the house, and god— whom she doesn’t believe in, by the way— only knows she’s spent enough years as a hermit. Now? Now Britta’s due for some fun.

Britta sidles behind the bar just as Starburns finishes his shift; he slaps her ass on his way out. (And this is someone who— if she liked killing them, which she doesn’t, but if she did— she would love to bleed dry, to sink her fangs into his trachea and just _rip_ , to totally eviscerate… but she’s not sure she could stomach flirting with him long enough to bring him home.) She makes a seven and seven for a sweet kid named Troy she spent a few nights with two years back, and a beer for his boyfriend (“He’s just in the bathroom, he’ll be back soon,”), and that’s basically it for the foreseeable future. The bar’s not packed, it’s a Tuesday, and the twenty or so patrons who’ve stayed past happy hour are still nursing the drinks they bought from Starburns. So Britta relaxes, leaning her elbows on the bar, her chin in her hand, watching a pool game between a brunette in a pinstriped suit, the sleeves of her blazer rolled up to her elbows, and some square in a turtleneck who looks far too old for her. He says something, and the woman laughs, tucking a piece of her long hair that isn’t pinned back from her face behind her ear, and for some reason this makes Britta’s stomach turn. ( _Some reason_ like she doesn’t know, like she isn’t fully aware of its eerie familiarity.)

Pinstripes lines up to sink the six ball into the corner pocket, but Britta can see from all the way over here that if she aims the cue ball back at the side rail, she can angle it to tap the four in on its way to the six (Britta’s not discounting the possibility that she does see this opportunity and is passing it up on purpose, letting this guy believe she’s worse at pool than she actually is, because she looks so _comfortable_ at that table)— but it doesn’t matter what moves and strategies Britta can see, because Britta doesn’t play pool anymore, hasn’t in a solid century, not since someone she’s long since left behind.

Then Pinstripes casts her gaze towards the bar, for just an instant, like she could feel eyes on her, and Britta looks away as quickly as she can, feeling remarkably like a teenager. She sputters a bit and clears her throat and pours herself a gin and tonic, because she needs something to do with her hands.

She hasn’t been counting, but a considerable chunk of time must have passed, because Leonard, who practically lives here, has crawled out of the bathroom long enough to order two Old Fashioneds, when Pinstripes sits down in front of Britta at the bar, all big round eyes and rosy cheeks. This woman— this _girl_ — is so horrifically young up close. She looks soft, so much so that Britta isn’t sure she’d be able to stop herself from sucking the life out of her if given the chance— which is why, she guesses, it’s good that she’s on the clock and that Pinstripes came here with Turtleneck, wherever he may be now.

“What can I get you?” Britta asks, throwing on her best customer service smile, resisting the urge to tease, _a daiquiri? a cosmo?_

And Pinstripes replies, in a heavy Southern accent (a bad one, a fake one— but, then, who is Britta to judge?), “Just a glass of your best red wine, darlin’.”

“Coming right up.”

Britta pulls a glass onto the bar, and she doesn’t expect the conversation to continue (if it even could be considered conversation at all) while she searches for the right bottle, and yet:

“I couldn’t help but notice you were eyein’ me over by the billiards table…”

It’s all Britta can do to suppress a snort. “Yeah, I was wondering what kind of girl wears a suit to a bar.” The bottle she was looking for has been retrieved from its shelf; now she just needs to figure out where the fuck Starburns left the corkscrew.

“Very funny,” Pinstripes retorts, making it very clear that she doesn’t find it funny at all.

“You play a lot of pool?”

“Oh, no,” Pinstripes says, shaking her head when Britta resurfaces with the corkscrew (which had been on the floor for _some_ reason, which doesn’t help her wanting to murder Starburns even a little bit). “That was my first time. Rich just wanted to show me how the game goes. I’m pretty sure he let me win.”

Screw works into cork and cork is pulled from bottle with a satisfying pop, and as wine flows into glass Britta scans the room for any sign of Turtleneck—  _Rich_ — and comes up empty.

“What happened, you send him home?”

She nods, maintaining steady eye contact the whole time it takes for Britta to slide the glass across the bar into her hand. “I decided I’m lookin’ for somethin’ a little different tonight.”

She smiles, but Britta can’t shake the feeling she’d be taking advantage of this girl, and there are some things even she will never do. Her moral code may be flimsy, sure, but it exists. That’s got to count for something, right?

“Well,” Britta says, “I hope you find what you’re looking for,” and turns down the bar to ask Troy’s boyfriend, Abed— at least, she’s pretty sure that’s what his name is?— if he’d like another beer. She returns when he declines, and Pinstripes is looking expectantly at her.

“What?” Britta asks.

“Aren’t you gonna ask my name?”

She scoffs. “Trust me, I’m too old for you.”

Her smile only grows. “Oh, I wouldn’t be too sure about that.” She opens her mouth just a little bit wider to take a sip of her wine, and Britta swears, unless she’s deluding herself, that she catches a glimpse of a left canine that hangs well below the straight edge of her incisors. And Britta caves.

“What’s your name?”

Pinstripes lights up. She straightens her posture, holds out her hand to be shaken. “Caroline. Caroline Decker. From Corpus Christi.”

Britta shakes her hand, just once, not particularly firmly. “You’re a long way from home, Caroline. What are you doing all the way out here?”

“Driftin’, mostly,” she shrugs. “Needed a change of scenery.” A pause. “You didn’t tell me your name, darlin’.”

“It’s Britta,” she says, because it’s true, at least, in this decade, in this town; she’d consider lying, as though it would preserve herself, but Britta Perry is every bit as phony as Caroline Decker, and to pull one of her former selves from their coffins is too great of a risk to take tonight, on a Tuesday.

“It is a pleasure to meet you, Britta.”

* * *

 

Jeffrey Winger, dust-ancient, clay, meets a woman just turned thirty, her days already grossly numbered, in East Grinstead moonlight that’s seen them many times but never more beautiful than tonight, whispering sweet platitudes about forever. She leans into his hand on her cheek, blinks up at him through soft eyelashes; it snows— oh, Lord, does it snow— and she doesn’t even mind that her stole is growing damp because he kisses her (and she feels so vile, as if he weren’t born of sin, as if the flakes of snow catching in his beard don’t make angels cry, as if his voice didn’t groan with decadent blasphemy), languid in the cold. They wager eternity for fidelity, as though it isn’t only the unholy who gamble; in the shadow of the cathedral she gasps, teeth pressing into skin like the tightening of her bodice, and the bells ring out in welcome: January the First, 1645.


	2. Chapter 2

Britta brings Caroline home, sure, but she doesn’t dare to touch. Caroline talks about Texas on the walk back to Britta’s apartment, not quite loud enough to overcome the L Street traffic, but Britta just watches the way her lips wrap around words, the stretching and contracting of skin, and Caroline could be lying through her teeth— probably is— and still Britta would say nothing. It’s barely lunchtime, and she is so hungry, and so intrigued.

They walk up three flights of stairs to Britta’s apartment, because the elevator doesn’t work, because the elevator has never worked. Keys turn lock, door swings wide, Caroline steps into a living room littered with furniture that is positively ancient, stiff-backed wooden chairs with anachronistic hemp upholstery, a low coffee table with clawed feet, scores of nameless oil-painted landscapes in ornate frames stuck to the walls with sticky tack. (There’s a mangy, half-blind, decrepit cat who, like everything else in this place, is far older than he ought to be around here somewhere, but he’s probably sleeping, and that’s probably for the best.) The archway that opens into the kitchen is flanked on either side by a yellowed, groaning clock whose face bears some handful of minutes beyond half past three and a round mirror in a wrought-iron frame that reveals an empty leather jacket standing near an empty pinstriped suit. Britta glances at it, just to check, just to confirm the things she already knows—and Caroline follows her eyes there, and Britta doesn’t miss the momentary hitch in her breathing.

“If you thought I was gonna be dinner,” Britta says, more quietly than she intends to, “you weren’t paying attention.”

Caroline gapes, a bit, stammering, “I— I didn’t—”

But Britta’s already striding off into the small kitchen. “I get it,” she says, pulling two Ziploc bags full of blood from the fridge and placing them on the counter. “Relax.” She takes two straws out of a drawer and stabs one into the side of each bag; she drops one in Caroline’s hand on her way to the antique sofa, and she pretends the hemp doesn’t scratch where she sits.

Caroline takes the chair to Britta’s right and drops her bag of blood on the coffee table as though it burns to the touch. Britta just watches— her fidgeting fingers, her face ducked, her shame.

“Not hungry?”

“Oh,” Caroline shakes her head, “no, that’s— it’s— Once it’s separated from the body, it stops being kosher.” She stammers over her words, her accent breaking all the while, like this mask doesn’t sit right on her features, nervous in Britta’s company. She tucks some of her hair behind her ear; Britta wonders if she’s ever met another of their kind before.

“You know,” Britta offers, “you can drop the accent, if you want. No judgment if you wanna keep it. Just an option.”

A breath of relief, and then, in a clean Standard American, “Was I really that bad at it?”

Britta laughs. She holds her thumb and forefinger about a centimeter apart. It’s strange to laugh, to use these muscles in this way; it leaves her awfully exposed.

Caroline giggles, too, like she can’t help it, “I’ve never used an accent before. I guess that’s why.”

Britta swallows down a mouthful of blood (how sweet it is to be satiated) before replying, “You don’t need it. Seriously.”

“Have you ever tried one?” Caroline blinks at her, and the question takes Britta aback, even though it really shouldn’t.

“Uh— yeah, I mean…” She takes another sip, grateful for something to occupy her hands. “I’ve been doing this one since, uh, 1901.”

Caroline perks up. “Oh! So you’re not—”

Britta laughs. “There weren’t even colonies when I was born.”

A low, strained yowl emits from some unseen room; Britta drops her blood pouch on the coffee table and rushes momentarily out of sight, only to return with a one-eyed cat in her arms, its fur thin to balding in patches, all sharp claws and wiry limbs. She coos at the thing, scratching behind its ears. “Freddy,” she tuts, “did you not eat your breakfast?”

Caroline twists around in her seat to look, and she smiles, just a little. “You’ve got a cat?”

“Uh huh.” Britta sits back down on the sofa, the cat wriggling into a comfortable position in her lap, its prehistoric joints clicking with every movement. “His name’s Friedrich. Friedrich, this is Caroline.”

Caroline reaches out a hand to pet at his frizzy grey fur. “Friedrich?”

“Yeah, like Engels.”

And Caroline laughs, again, little bells, all festive tin.

They fall into quiet, for a moment, something neither quite strained nor comfortable, something pensive. Friedrich purrs to fill the space, and then, softly:

“It’s— Caroline, you know, it isn’t my real name.”

She snorts (this girl is so _young_ ). “Britta isn’t mine, either.”

* * *

 

Jeffrey Winger stays long enough to commission a portrait, to entrap her visage on canvas like a fly in amber, soft candlelight on her cheekbones, her wine-stained lips, the ends of her blonde hair just brushing her coiffed collar. He pays extra to gild the frame, like she doesn’t know exactly what he’s doing, like he would ever need to preserve her memory when she herself is sculpted marble. His kisses plant cold on her cheek (in time they will bloom), but for now he is off to Vienna, and there simply isn’t room for his wife to come along.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (vampires can be jewish, too) (get me)


	3. Chapter 3

Caroline tells Britta about Annie Edison, the girl she’d laid to rest mere days ago, the one who followed Phish on tour in a van (and Britta laughs, _It was the Grateful Dead for me, and then it was Radiohead_ ), the one who spent eight years at the FBI before disappearing to go “undercover” in Denver when she’d sucked DC dry. There’s a light in her eyes when she talks about Annie, who took up calligraphy as a hobby and filed reports in purple pen, so used to being this person who doesn’t exist anymore and so afraid of not knowing who Caroline Decker is.

Britta thinks about her years in the Peace Corps, her foot modeling, New York— and New York and New York and New York, it gnaws at her, old ideas stuck in her teeth, magnetic in her skin it keeps pulling her back— Seattle, Boulder, Phoenix, Austin, Sandpoint, that year she spent working for the National Parks Service, Boston, Portland, the other Portland, Paris (and she doesn’t dare think back further than Paris, because this far is dangerous enough as it is); Caroline opens little pockets into which Britta can contribute, where she can share, but her tongue is too thick to speak, and that’s probably for the best; anyone she may have been before has long since rotted in her casket, the family mausoleum already full to bursting, and there’s no sense in unearthing old bones. Caroline can keep Annie in her eyes and in her voice, she can leave a breadcrumb map of where she’s been, but Britta learned a long time ago not to force scorched earth to grow moss.

Britta drives Caroline home (well, to the motel where she’s crashing until she decides if she’ll stay) before she can start to talk about things they really shouldn’t talk about, not tonight, because this girl really can talk like she’ll eventually run out of breath, and Britta really doesn’t want to be the one who teaches her otherwise.

She gets out at the curb and asks, almost sheepishly, “Will I see you at the bar tomorrow?”

And although Britta rolls her eyes and smiles and answers, “Duh-doy, I work there,” she drives away feeling grossly perpendicular.

When she gets home, she takes a deep breath to steady herself (she imagines filling her pockets with stones, like it’ll keep her grounded, but there are only so many ways an experiment like that can end, and she’s already lost so many friends), and walks into the museum she’s made of her apartment’s second bedroom, large paintings covered with tarp, old family heirlooms. She picks a stack of old leather-bound journals from the floor, blows the dust from their covers, leaves as quickly as she can. The door rattles shut and she can exhale, finally, what a privilege it is to convert oxygen to carbon dioxide. She takes them into bed with her, Friedrich stretched out at her side; she thumbs through old memories in search of blank pages, and when she finds them, she spills.

* * *

 

Jeffrey Winger picks Lord Byron out of his teeth on the banks of Lake Geneva, rain soaking into his waistcoat. He’s here for the party much more than the poetry, but, oh, isn’t it a shame? If he’d arrived just a few days earlier he might’ve caught a crass young thing, too beautiful never to have been married, a guest of Mary’s— their mothers had been acquainted, or so she claimed— and hasn’t he always had an eye for blondes?


	4. Chapter 4

Caroline comes to the bar the next night, and the one after that, and quickly establishes a pattern— she brings books, notebooks, pens; pretends to work; sits in the same seat at the corner of the bar until everyone knows that _this_ is Caroline’s seat (and this kind of notoriety would be awfully dangerous if this town weren’t so fucking desolate); she smiles when Britta comes in; flirts with Starburns just to laugh at him when he leaves; stops being _new_ far too soon. She doesn’t come over after last call again, always leaving with dinner, and every time Caroline bats her eyes Britta goes home alone, pores over ancient manuscripts for words from old friends, depletes her stock of leftover blood, retreats inside herself. Caroline blooms; Britta wilts.

It rains one Friday night after weeks of budgeted meals and half-sleep, growing ever more pallid, and though sleep is more a choice than a necessity, an elective, Britta feels more than anything else _tired_ , dull. Starburns graduates from slapping to grabbing whole handfuls of her ass like they’ve added a new step to the changing of the guard, and Britta, a soldier, digs her teeth into her own tongue.

Caroline is already here and already halfway through her second glass of wine. Britta folds her arms into a nest against the bar and lays her head there for just a moment. She feels Caroline’s eyes on her, then there’s the scuffling of a bar stool and feet, and by the time some college-aged boi in a Dungeons and Dragons t-shirt clears his throat to get Britta’s attention and order a beer, there’s an empty wine glass on the bar and no sign of a lamb-eyed lioness. Her hair plasters itself to her neck; even the threat of ruining these boots wasn’t enough to deter her from walking; her body is so stiff, and yet she feels so pliable.

Caroline walks out of the men’s bathroom after a few suspicious minutes, hiding behind her hair— she’s taken the clip out?— wiping lipstick from the corner of her mouth with her thumb. She reclaims her seat, blinks up at Britta through her lashes, and there is just so much light in her eyes. She glows.

(Britta wants to ask, but her stomach contracts and instead she chews on the inside of her lip— she’s getting good at that.)

“More wine?”

Caroline leans up onto the bar and grins, like she is somewhere else entirely, celestial, like there is wild magic in her bones. In the process, a small six-pointed star on a thin gold chain dislodges itself from the neck of her blouse and hangs suspended above the wood of the bar. It must be nice to believe in something, Britta thinks, but it rails against the nature of her condition, and how does she ever reconcile the two? (But, then, what does Britta know? Her white atheism only reinforces her gentility.)

“Play pool with me.”

“Pool?”

“Just one game.”

Britta glances toward the pool table (which she’s been training herself not to do anymore, because that’s how all of this started, really, all of this— whatever this is). Two blond men with the top buttons of their shirts undone seem to be finishing up a match of their own; Rolex is aiming for the eight, and Glasses is pretending he’s not about to lose a hundred bucks.

“I’m on the clock.”

“It’ll be fun!” Caroline pleads, and she reaches for Britta’s wrist, and it’s been so long since she hasn’t been burned by another person’s skin.

“You know you can’t charm me, right?” (But even as she says it she knows it to be a half-truth; Britta may never have met her venom, but still she falls on the far side of enraptured.) “I’m immune.”

Britta thinks about giving in, considers it in earnest. How quaint would that be? How cosmically clichéd? How perfectly plotted, to bend again for someone who will hand her a cue? How fictive, to reclaim green felt as though it ever belonged to her in the first place. But that kind of shallow empowerment is a cryptid, a theory. There are things not meant to be owned, not by her, and if she splintered for every pretty girl who smiled her way there would be nothing left. Compromise has never been one of Britta’s virtues anyway.

Caroline waits for Britta to reestablish eye contact before she says, softly and sincerely, “Please.”

It is frustrating to be in this position. It is frustrating to watch herself decline when she could easily have a pleasant time just acquiescing. It is frustrating to play the “What’s the Worst That Could Happen?” game. It is frustrating to know that in another life Britta Perry might have been a harbinger of chaos, but this self has already spent too much time destructing, and so she shakes her head.

“Not tonight. I just can’t.”

Caroline’s face falls, truly disappointed for the first time that Britta has seen. And it _bites_. Britta can practically _smell_ Caroline decide that her Disney Princess eyes won’t work so it’s no use to try (oh, how little she knows). Instead she substitutes the floor for her stool and begins pulling on her coat.

“Fine,” Caroline sighs. “You should come to the motel when you’re done with your shift. I have a gift for you.”

In the time it takes Britta to process the request, Caroline has already disappeared into the crowd.

* * *

 

Jeffrey Winger just so happens to be in Paris the day they bury Oscar Wilde, and though he’s never known the man he stops by to pay his respects, wind grazing at his mustache. He finds a blonde in the back row, her hair up and her eyes down, black tailor-made draped limp from her shoulders, a parasol to shield her from the light; her breath hangs visible in the air, silver sky like his eyes; a smile tugs at his lips. She lets him buy her one drink, and between sips of champagne he tells her about New York, she’s got to come to New York, and can he show her this game he learned there? She doesn’t dare tell him she’d been planning to catch the first ship across the Atlantic on the First of January anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (op is jewish and not totally certain it's clear that she's making fun of gentiles who think they know how judaism works)


	5. Chapter 5

By the time Britta’s walked home, gotten into her car, and driven over to the motel, it’s approaching four. She knocks on the door to Room 202, chews on her thumbnail. It’s still raining, somehow, endless into an endless night, but Britta doesn’t mind; it’s nice to pretend she belongs to nature for a minute, a thing organic, rather than whatever aberrant she really is.

When Caroline answers she is something Britta has never seen before, like she left her composure at the bar, or in Corpus Christi. Her pupils blown, hair mussed, blood smudged across her lips and teeth, she pulls— literally pulls— Britta into the whirlwind. On the floor beside the television there’s a pile of about a dozen assorted thermoses and travel mugs, the dim incandescent light reflecting off the metal and ceramic once the door closes.

“I’m sorry I started without you.”

Britta frowns. She studies Caroline intently, her rumpled cardigan, her nautical-print dress, her bare feet; Britta doesn’t know what to make of it all. “It’s okay…” she says, cautiously, beginning to accrue some idea of what it is they’re talking about, but the details are still fuzzy.

“I think you’re gonna like this gift. Well, I hope so, at least.”

Something stirs in the bathroom— there’s a clanging, and a grunt, and Britta’s eyes trace the pool of yellow light creeping its way through the marginally-ajar door. Britta looks to Caroline, who nods in assent, so she worms her way around the bed and the suitcase. She takes a deep breath, preparing herself to be surprised (because when has Caroline ever not surprised her?). She pushes open the bathroom door, steps into the artificial light, looks up to find Starburns, his wrists above his head, tied to the shower curtain rod with a shimmery purple scarf, a yellow paisley one stuffed into and hanging out of his mouth, blood seeping from his neck into his vest, collecting at the bottom of the tub.

He’s fighting to stay alive and upright, but what other choice does he have? If Britta looks closely, she could see tears gathering at the corners of his eyes— but she doesn’t look closely at all. Instead she looks at his puncture wounds (so pristinely placed; Caroline took the prime real estate at his jugular, the room with a view; Britta could settle for the arteries on the other side of his neck, like any logical person would do, or she could slip her fangs into the slots Caroline has already scored—how intimate would that be?), then back at Caroline, who seems to have materialized in the doorway behind her.

Caroline wipes some excess blood from her chin, licks it from her thumb; Britta tracks the motion of her tongue, and there’s so much going on in this instant, and it’s overwhelming.

“He’s all yours,” Caroline says. “I’ve taken all I can shy of seriously injuring him. You can have as much as you want, obviously.”

Britta may not have had much in the way of formal education, but she can do simple arithmetic: “So the mugs—?”

“Bring home leftovers.”

She could kiss Caroline right now, wants to, holy shit does she want to— but there is no proximity to death, no matter how close, that would prevent Starburns from finding it _hot_ , so she refrains, stamps out that impulse, because how could she ever relish his death knowing he left satisfied?

“I hate you,” she says, because it’s all she can. “I’m never gonna top this.”

Caroline smiles. She backs out of the room, closing the door as she goes, and now it’s just Britta and Starburns and yellowed linoleum. She walks right up to the lip of the tub, just those few inches separating this whimpering mess of a man from the beast in blonde and black. He squirms, rears back, tries in vain to get away; Britta reaches up and lays a finger against each of the small, deep wounds on his neck, feels the skin ever so lightly raise and pebble under her touch, she _presses_ , digs the flat of her fingers in. He screams, as much as he can still gagged. Britta just laughs, and licks the blood from her fingertips, and somehow it isn’t until now that she realizes just how _hungry_ she’s been, and how sweet it aches to consume.

She steps back— it’s hard but she does it— and surveys the scene with more scrutiny: the stoppered drain, the way the hem of his jeans has started to soak up some of the blood, how thoughtfully contained; the swell of his ribs under labored breath— swollen, his throat and tongue, swollen, his gut, swollen, the way his bowels will empty the moment he dies, which only gives her more incentive to prolong his suffering, or else to separate his body from his blood lest it become undrinkable and all of this wasted. She eyes the scarf anchoring him to the curtain rod.

“Now,” she says, quietly, so that her tone can’t betray the voracity of her hunger, “I’m going to untie you— but you have to be good. Can you do that?”

He nods, as much as he can— poor thing, so weak, he’s already lost so much blood— so Britta tugs his wrists loose from the scarf. She twists his arms behind his back, already a stranger to her own strength, and one of them is already halfway torn from its socket before Starburns gets both feet out of the tub. He screams, of course; she doesn’t bother reminding him that he promised to behave, because she’s already got him pinned on the linoleum floor; she can hear a few of his lower ribs crack under the weight of her knee.

Britta leans down over his neck until she’s breathing right onto those two purple divots, weeping blood onto the floor. Slowly, carefully, she lines her fangs up and bites. It’s not a perfect fit (Caroline’s mouth is smaller than hers is), but, _oh_. Britta Perry has done some truly repugnant things in her many lives, but this? This is _filthy_ , wretched in a way she’s never felt before, intimate in exactly the way she’d imagined it would be. Sharing like this is so new; it makes her dizzy. She drinks.

She drinks until she remembers where she is. When she comes up for air, Starburns is already getting grey. She gets off of him, hoists him over the lip of the tub so his torso is in and his legs are out. She would dig her nails into his neck, the soft parts where it connects to his jaw, if she didn’t keep them so short, but as it is her feral strength is enough to pry his head from its stump. (It comes off in one clean tear, but how vile would it be if she had to work it off bit by bit, if his muscles were more stubborn?) Britta Perry is now in league with the grasshoppers.

She stands up and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. She sets off to clean herself while he bleeds out, his already-greasy hair matting with blood. In between spurts of the faucet, a guttural expression of disgust pierces through from the other room.

Britta walks out of the bathroom to find Caroline sneering at the motel TV, remote in hand. Onscreen, a despicably familiar face berates Christopher Mintz-Plasse; the laugh track contorts her sated stomach.

Caroline glances at her, then back to the TV. “ _The Great Indoors_. It’s an awful show.”

Britta nods. “Jeff Winger. I hate that guy.”

This gets all of Caroline’s attention. She sits upright, puts the remote down on the mattress, turns her whole body to look at Britta. “You, too?”

“Yeah,” Britta says. “What’s your reason?”

* * *

 

Jeffrey Winger, dust-ancient, clay, meets the daughter of German Jewish immigrants in the shadow of her parents' tailory, and while the rest of Amity is tucked away for Easter Vigil they whisper their own reverence here, breath hushed close to skin, giddy and ripe; she unfurls under his gaze like jessamine, like moonflower. The first warm night in April wraps around them, melting their wrists just enough to fuse. She lets his teeth bear down on her throat, because this is the first thing that is truly hers, him, lion as philosopher king, his uncalloused hands. Dew descends onto grass; 1883 is for lovers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here's the violence I promised


	6. Chapter 6

Caroline calculates that it’ll take three days to get from Denver to Los Angeles, driving through the nights, sleeping their days in motel after motel. They bottle blood, pack their bags, leave Starburns and their contaminated clothes in a dumpster fire, coax Friedrich into a crate in the backseat of Caroline’s car; Britta sneaks a leather-bound journal into her suitcase.

Britta drives the first night into Utah. Caroline tracks the map on her phone, but through hours-long swathes of empty highway she twists in her seat, tucks her legs up under herself, watches Britta watch the road.

“There are three different towns in Pennsylvania called Amity,” Caroline says. Britta glances at her sidelong for just an instant, her big eyes, her lipgloss.

“Sounds like bad municipal planning.”

“I’m from the one near Lake Erie.”

Britta’s read enough novels, lived enough years, known enough people to recognize that this is the part where she peels herself open, matching Caroline’s pace, limb for limb, sharing secret selves— but Britta doesn’t want to, doesn’t want to know, doesn’t want Caroline to know. She’s burned herself so many times reliving old lives that the blisters have long since calloused over and she is all rough to the touch. It’s bad enough Caroline told her about Annie; if either of them were to say any older names— god forbid their _given_ names— some ancient cypher will illuminate, some doomsday trigger pulled, some faults in the earth will tear; don’t Jewish people have that reverence for the power of true names? Britta isn’t sure her mouth would let her say those words even if she wanted to. It’s safer to pretend that Britta Perry is all who has ever existed, only this self in this city, so thoroughly uncomfortable wearing dead relatives’ clothing.

Britta sighs, just a little, resisting the urge to look at Caroline in favor of hunting for their exit, hoping to be greeted by motel lights.

“Don’t,” she says. “Don’t tell me.”

* * *

 

Jeffrey Winger whisks her away to the big city, to the thrill of the chase, massaging out of her shoulders any half-rural village that might linger, any glistening wonder left in her big round eyes (like the moon, he says, like the moon, they see him as he is, they let him breathe). She struggles against the night, aching for morning warmth; he fills the house with flowers, fragrant and light; he kisses her the way he always does, tender, the only piece of him soft (save for the skin at the nape of his neck). And then he's gone, because he's never been to Madrid before, and if she tags along who will watch the flowers die?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter was supposed to be longer lmao


	7. Chapter 7

It must be only a couple hours to sunrise by the time they reach the motel. Caroline checks them in, has herself some dinner; Britta finds the pool out back.

She pulls off her boots, rolls her jeans up to her knees, and sits down on the edge of the spackled floor, her feet dangling into the warm water (though _warm_ is a relative term; she’s sure the nighttime desert would make any human shiver, but Britta’s hollow skin has always been cool to the touch). She closes her eyes. She exhales, actively working to uncoil her gut— she’s so _tense_ , tense around Caroline, tense about what they’re about to do, tense against red-brown sand and chlorine. The stars hang static in the sky, teasing.

Britta opens her eyes when she feels Caroline’s weight beside her, pressing at her arm just so. She has some blood smudged across her chin; Britta reaches to wipe it off with her thumb. Caroline smiles, just for a second, and then she looks down at her hands. Britta cranes her neck to see Caroline’s ballet flats sitting at attention next to her own haphazardly-dropped, halfway-unlaced boots. What a perfect cliché.

“Britta?”

“Yeah?”

“It’s not normal that you don’t want to know anything about me. And it’s not normal that you don’t want me to know anything about you.”

Britta opens her mouth to reply, but her brain goes blank. Instead of an answer, all she has is Caroline’s quiet, unwavering stare. Britta chews on her lip.

“We’re not normal.”

“Doesn’t that ever get tiring? Don’t you ever get lonely?” Caroline shakes her head. “You still have feelings, don’t you? Or should I look forward to losing those in a couple hundred years, too?”

Britta looks down at her ankles, pale columns of flesh breaking the surface tension of the water. She tries to work out what color Caroline’s toenails are painted through the blue. She counts the seconds she can drag out not answering; she makes it almost to two hundred before she caves.

“You watch a lot of people die,” she says. “You get burned a couple times. You withdraw to protect yourself, ‘cause it’s easier to fly under the radar when you’re unattached, and then eventually you get to a point where you can’t tell if you’re secretly kind and pretending you’re not or if you’re secretly not and pretending you are.” She glances up; Caroline blinks, but her gaze holds. “Old habits die hard, right? I’m working against some fucking ancient ones.”

Caroline considers this, rolls the words around in her mouth like marbles, lets her jaw work through the conceit before she settles. “My time may not be finite,” she says, “but it _is_ precious. All I ask is that you don’t waste it.” Then she smiles, all brass. “Now, are you going to jump in this pool with me or not?”

Before Britta knows how to answer, Caroline leaps to her feet, backs up a couple paces, launches into a cannon ball that hits the water with such voracity that Britta feels the sting of chlorine in her eyes. Caroline resurfaces, her hair looking like it’s only just survived a hurricane, cardigan and all. She looks expectantly at Britta.

Britta, rather than jumping, slides from where she sits into the water (she wishes she’d rolled her jeans back down beforehand, because now this just feels uncomfortable). She sinks down beneath the surface for just a moment, smooths her hair back from her face when she returns. Caroline watches, somewhere between smiling and not.

“Are you happy now?”

“You didn’t jump.”

Britta laughs. “I’m really bad at following directions.”

Caroline laughs, too, and there’s that brass again, that sweet metal, inorganic. Britta comes to the conclusion that some monstrosities are exquisite, and that there is no place on this Earth for either of them.

Caroline strides forward, closing in on where Britta treads against the wall. “We’ll work on that.”

If ever they are to be equals it is here and now, their necks exposed to the air but their bodies half-lost to some other plane of existence, the minutes ticking down to sunrise. Welcome to the desert, all blue and red, the stars infinite and in her eyes.

Caroline blinks through her lashes; Britta reaches out and kisses her.

* * *

 

Jeffrey Winger must be truly bored to meander through Ohio this way (somehow disappointed to find far less wheat than he expected, long golden stalks tickled by wind, warm yellow striped against cyan sky), and yet here he is, on a sidewalk in Columbus just past sunset, the first stars waiting to appear until they are sure it is safe. A familiar dark-haired doe enters a hospital; he dares not disturb this cruel pastoral irony, Ohio so bucolic, saccharine. He wonders if he'll be able to go back to Berlin now that the war is over, if it'll be any fun at all when Europe has cannibalized itself into oblivion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay so I'm planning 1 more chapter (though I might split it into two) and an epilogue. I have absolutely no idea when any of that will be finished; it's taken me four months to get this far.
> 
> it'll come eventually, I promise

**Author's Note:**

> you can find me on tumblr @ ladykima


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